Fakes, knockoffs, pirate goods, counterfeits: China is notorious as the global manufacturing center of all things ersatz. But in the first decade after the People’s Republic joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, a particular kind of knockoff began to capture the public imagination: products that imitate but do not completely replicate the designs, functions, technology, logos and names of existing branded products. An old Chinese word meaning “mountain fortress” — shanzhai — was repurposed to describe this type of knockoff.
Chinese internet users began to use the word shanzhai with a degree of approval. This was partly because shanzhai products, though aping the designs and names of established brands, often add innovations that the originals lack. This is particularly notable with mobile phones, the shanzhai versions of which were among the first to feature more than one camera lens and the capacity to use two SIM cards from different networks. Starting around 2008, the creativity and speed of release of such knockoff products began to be discussed as a type of innovation with Chinese characteristics and a creative approach suited to a poor country developing at breakneck speed.
This episode of Sinica is a conversation about shanzhai and the whole universe of Chinese knockoff culture with Fan Yang, an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of the book Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture, and Globalization. You can read the SupChina backgrounder here.
Recommendations:
Jeremy: A Guide to the Mammals of China, edited by Andrew T. Smith and Yan Xie; A Field Guide to the Birds of China, by John MacKinnon and Karen Phillipps, in collaboration with He Fenqi; Beijing Bird Guide (野鸟图鉴), edited by Gao Wu.
Fan: The Zhongshuge Bookstore in Hangzhou; Wei Zhuang, a branch of the famous Zhiweiguan restaurant (established in 1913) in Hangzhou.
Kaiser: Underground Airlines, by Ben Winters.
Robert Daly of the Kissinger Institute on the morality of U.S. China policy
China Tobacco: How China's tobacco monopoly also has ensured that China keeps smoking
The Philadelphia Orchestra commemorates the 50th anniversary of its groundbreaking China tour
Ian Johnson on "Sparks," his new book on China's underground historians
U.S. Congressman Rick Larsen (D-WA) on his new U.S.-China policy white paper
The case for the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement
The Rise and Fall of the EAST: MIT's Yasheng Huang on his new book
China Stories summer special: The best of This Week in China's HIstory
Wargaming a Taiwan invasion scenario: Lyle Goldstein on the CSIS wargame “The First Battle of the Next War"
The state of play of generative AI in China, with Paul Triolo
Is the Biden administration resetting U.S.-China relations?
The CFR Taiwan task force report: advice and dissent, with Maggie Lewis and Paul Heer
Transnational repression and China's "overseas police stations," with Jeremy Daum of Yale's Paul Tsai China Law Center
China after COVID: UPenn's Neysun Mahboubi reports on scholarly exchange in a tightening political space
China's Military-Civil Fusion program: CNAS fellow Elsa Kania on the myths and realities
Mr. Blinken goes to Beijing, with former NSC China Director Dennis Wilder
Economist Keyu Jin on her new book, "The New China Playbook"
David Ownby of ReadingtheChinaDream.com on the intellectual mood in China
Curtain-raiser on the Shangri-La Dialogue, with the man who runs the show: James Crabtree of IISS
Harvard's William Kirby on China's higher education system and his book "Empires of Ideas"
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free